This Latina NPR Host Destroyed A Trump Surrogate Over His Use Of The Word “Illegal”

“‘Illegals’ is not a noun.”

NPR’s Maria Hinojosa was a guest on AM Joy on MSNBC and, of course, the conversation found its way to Donald Trump. During the discussion, Trump surrogate Steve Cortes tried to argue why undocumented immigrants are a burden on the United States. Cortes tried to use the term “illegals” and “illegal immigrant” and Hinojosa was not going to let him get away with it. Immediately, she jumped right in and told him that “illegals” is not a noun and cannot be used to describe a person.

When she said “illegals” is not a noun, Cortes tried to get out of it by saying it’s an adjective.

CREDIT: AM Joy / MSNBC

“What you can do is that you can say that it is an immigrant living illegally or an immigrant living without paper or without documents in this country,” Hinojosa told Cortes. “But what you cannot do is to label a person illegal. The reason why I say this isn’t because I learned it from some radical Latino or Latina studies professor when I was a college student. I learned it from Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust, who said, ‘You know what. The first thing they [the Nazis] did was they they declared the Jews an illegal people.’ That’s what we’re talking about at this point. This is real fear.”